For those who know Galactic Civilization II and Homeworld, this very corny clip will make you sit up and take notice.
For those that don’t know, Homeworld had one of the few innovative ideas ever to come out in the world of strategy gaming, but its execution was terrible. Galactic Civilization was great execution of the tired old 4x model with a much needed focus on the A.I.
Now the makers of Galactic Civilization have taken the idea behind Homeworld and tried to do it properly. By all accounts, they have succeed.
This from Gamespy…..
The difference between SoaSE and other “4X” titles is that all of a player’s decisions are carried out in the manner of a real-time strategy title. Click on the capital ship factory and it takes approximately 30 seconds for the ship to be produced. Put together a fleet of a dozen or so ships and send them on a three-jump trip to an enemy world and it’ll take them eight or so minutes to get there. Once in combat, battle is decided by spaceship strengths and weaknesses, proper positioning and the use of player-controlled special abilities in the manner of a classic RTS — all of it rendered in stunning graphical splendor.
The final result of this unlikely blending of styles is an elegant and stately ballet in which players use the mouse wheel to zoom from an overarching view of their empire down to the local level where they can tweak the placement of ship factories, defensive emplacements or direct individual spaceships in battle. Despite being in real time, the game’s pace is fairly sedate. This allows players plenty of leisure to concentrate on things like developing planetary infrastructure, conducting diplomatic relations with other players in multiplayer games, buying and selling resources on the black market and tweaking their trade networks to maximize revenue. As a “4X” title, Sins of a Solar Empire is filled with the sorts of global “guns or butter?” decision-making that make these titles so much fun.
When battles do occur, players have an impressive amount of control over the makeup, disposition and tactics of their space navies. Each race has a wide variety of purpose-built spacecraft ranging from six different types of mothership down to tiny missile launchers, fighter carriers, gunships, support vessels and much more. The game’s deep but easy-to-understand research tree has both a “civilian” and “military” wing that lets players further tweak both their imperial and close-combat strategies to their liking. These different varieties of spacecraft aren’t just for show, either. Players can and must put together purpose-designed task forces using a variety of spaceship classes in order to be competitive. They can even take direct control over their ships, though the excellent unit AI is perfectly capable of fighting a decent battle. The result is that the game requires as much strategizing at the unit level as running the whole empire does.
Most other reviews seem to say similar things. As the Wikipedia article on the game states….
Since its launch, Sins of a Solar Empire has received almost universally positive reviews. It was named Game Informer’s PC Game of the Month, and was awarded a 9/10 review.[7] The US edition of PC Gamer awarded the game a 91%, as well as an Editor’s Choice award, whilst the UK edition awarded it 84%.[8] GameSpot awarded the game a 9/10, as well as an Editor’s Choice award.[9] GameSpy awarded the game a 4.5/5, as well as an Editor’s Choice award.[10] IGN awarded the game an 8.9/10, as well as an Editor’s Choice award.[11] Maximum PC rated the game a 9/10, and bestowed upon it their KickAss award. In addition to these accolades, Sins of a Solar Empire has received Editor’s Choice awards from FiringSquad[12], Gamer 2.0[13], GameShark[14], GameTap[15], and Pelit. As of March 2008, Sins of a Solar Empire has a recorded aggregate score of 89% on Metacritic (based on 23 reviews).[16]
Common praise for the game has been directed towards the game’s clever blend of RTS and 4X gameplay (hence the RT4X moniker), the seamless zoom function, and the user-friendly Empire Tree and UI. That the game was designed to play efficiently on older as well as newer PCs has garnered considerable praise. Criticism has been focused on the lack of a single-player campaign, and the potentially lengthy game-play times.[17